posted by tom / January 06, 2006 /
2 comments /
When I see an article on Slashdot with a title like "Warp Drives In Development", I automatically assume it's there because of editorial incompetence or as comment-inducing flamebait. I mean, yes, I remember from that one Star Trek movie that there was this guy who was going to invent the warp engine, but he was an alcoholic so time travelers had to yell at him to get his shit together (step 2 of 12). And I agree, it was the closest Star Trek has ever come to a so-called character arc, and therefore the greatest piece of drama ever, and therefore entirely plausible. But that doesn't mean engineering schools are going to start offering Advanced Nacelle Design anytime soon.
But it turns out that the physics behind it maybe, possibly, could be for real. Obviously I'm in no position to seriously comment, being a total moron at physics. But a new paper on the underlying theory won a "Best Paper of the Year" award from these guys, who are apparently reputable. And the DoE and DoD seem committed to sinking some money into testing the underlying science (they've done the same for cold fusion, of course). But most importantly: the backstory to the theory is incredibly entertaining. The theory ain't bad, either.
As this comment explains, the idea is that a sufficiently massive torus of matter rotated in a strong magnetic field deforms spacetime on one side of the torus, exerting a force that'd pull the whole contraption along. More importantly, physics magic means that, given a strong enough effect, the speed of light could be exceeded. In order to avoid violating general relativity, this happens by slipping into another dimension. Which is awesome.
This is all based on Heim Theory, a GUT put together by Burkhard Heim. As I said, all of this stuff is over my head, but Heim's story is fascinating. First and foremost, the dude had no hands. That's right, handless. He lost 'em in an explosive-handling mishap when he was working in a Nazi munitions factory. Right there: two strikes in his favor. First, it's clear that within the world of science more hands = more distractions. Just look at the scholarly output of Dr. Octopus — the man is an academic laughingstock. Second, everybody knows that Nazi scientists are tops when it comes to producing diabolical, earth-shattering science on a shoestring budget. If you need a lot of gorilla cyborgs for not a lot of money, you know who to call.
That explosion also left Heim blind and mostly deaf. He couldn't work in a collaborative setting — his handicaps were too much of an impediment. He holed himself up and worked on his theory, terrified of plagiarists. He only ever published one paper, at the urging of a friend. Finally, decades later, he tried testing it. With the assistance of other researchers, the theory was plugged into a computer. From its first principles, the masses of the elementary particles were calculated, and matched up very closely with experimental observation. Apparently this is a big deal.
But even though Heim died several years ago, the bulk of his work seems to still be in the process of being chewed over by the scientific community. It's all in German and uses some pretty nasty calculus, presumably just to be difficult. I guess I'd be in an antagonistic mood, too, if my hands were blown off. Also not helping attract scholarly sympathy: Heim was embraced by UFO crackpots. It sounds like he tried to keep his work separate and reputable, but didn't entirely eschew their company.
Of course I clearly shouldn't believe everything I read on Wikipedia, and I should believe even less of what I read on Slashdot (you should believe none of what you read here). But c'mon — we're talking about a handless, blind, deaf, reclusive ex-Nazi scientist. I can't comment on the physics, but this theory is clearly biographically sound.
